My friend was looking at a photo of UCLA's freshman All-American center Kevin Love, who will be playing in the basketball Final Four this weekend. I explained that Love may have the potential to be the first American white basketball star since John Stockton retired. He replied, "Are you sure he's all white?"
So, I looked into his background a little and discovered that Kevin Love is the nephew of Mike Love, lead singer of the Beach Boys, so Kevin Love's cousin-once-removed is all-American tragic genius Brian Wilson.
Kurt Streeter writes in the LA Times:
For generations, the Loves and their extended family have been at the center of much that makes Los Angeles what it is, for better or worse.
This is a clan that was part of the vast, Depression-era migration that helped give the culture here a Midwestern flavor, witnessing first hand the waves of racial change that roiled South L.A. in the '50s and '60s.
It's the family -- Stan's brother, Mike, and three of their first cousins -- that formed the nucleus of the Beach Boys: the band that helped convince the world every Los Angeles neighborhood was bordered by a sandy beach stuffed with surfboards and bikinis. It's a family, with Stan Love stuck in the middle, that struggled against something deep in the fabric of this place -- excess, indulgence and the madness that can come with fame in L.A.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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23 comments:
Very true Steve.
Somewhat OT, have you seen that Mexicans prefer Hillary or Obama to McCain, because they think they'll be more amenable to Open Borders and Amnesty?
Link in Spanish but those who can't read it can use Babelfish.
Interesting that many Mexicans believe, in aggregate, that Open Borders despite McCain's preferences for them are more likely with either Dem.
It's sort of a smackdown of the thinking on VDARE and many of your readers.
Interestingly, the preferences: Hillary>Obama>McCain were set by Affirmative Action (Obama was seen to perfer Blacks over Latinos) and Immigration.
Babelfish.com can probably provide a useful rough translation.
And Kevin's father, Stan Love, played for the Baltimore Bullets in the 70's.
Is there any other example of a rock star sharing genes with a professional major league athlete? There's certainly a lot of "alpha male" tendencies in common between the two callings, but athleticism and musicianship I guess are fairly orthogonal. But Mike really wasn't a "real" musician - he was darn good at what at what he did - but that was singing about girls and cars and surfing, not brooding about relationships and emoting his inner conflicts.
Stan appears to be as crazy as Mike, as this article suggests.
I've tried to find how Mike and Brian are related, but given the craziness being exhibited by all three cousins (let's throw Dennis in, to boot), I'm guessing Mike's mother and Murray Wilson were siblings.
Somewhat OT, have you seen that Mexicans prefer Hillary or Obama to McCain, because they think they'll be more amenable to Open Borders and Amnesty...?
This has what to do with Kevin Love?
"It's sort of a smackdown of the thinking on VDARE and many of your readers."
No, it isn't.
Hey, what about Tyler Hansbrough? Hard to tell how his game will translate into the NBA, but he has a chance.
Lebron James the digital wizard and Kevin Love the real deal.
Speaking of Lebron, Steve hasn't mentioned the Vogue cover, featuring the "angry" James and the white femme fatale Gisele Bundchen. The picture is by Annie Leibovitz.
Hmmm... Leibovitz was allegedly Susan "The white race is the cancer of human history" Sontag's lover.
This a page right out of Alon Ziv's playbook.
Not much true. I figured Steve could get a column out of it. That's all.
I don't think there's much related with team sports and musicianship. If you look at the attributes related to team sports: reliable and high-level execution of arcane skills and superior size and strength, vs. emotional expression and ability to inspire a mood or adoration, it's pretty different.
Most pro athletes, a few exceptions like Howie Long or Terry Bradshaw aside, are boring. Joe Montana was perhaps the best QB ever. And he's ... boring. That's what made him great. He was more workmanlike than rock-star.
One thing Stan Love and Mike Love seem to have in common is that their both lawsuit-happy (refer to the article on Stan posted by ziel). Mike Love, despite not being the true talent behind the Beach Boys' music, has somehow finagled it so that he now has the rights to "The Beach Boys", and other former band members -- including Brian Wilson, who actually created all those haunting tunes -- are not allowed to use the name. It makes sense in a way that, as Ziel postulated, Murray Wilson and Mike Love's mother were siblings. Murray was by all accounts a bad guy, taking out his glass eye and forcing his sons to stare into his empty socket when they displeased him in any way, and he ended up selling the rights to their entire songbook for something like $75,000in 1970 or so. Character does run in families, and any expert in sociopathy will tell you that it is passed along by the mother more than the father, so if Murray's sister was Mike Love's mother, hmm, that might not bode too well for Mike Love's basic loyalty and decency. And if he were related paternally to Stan Love, that would bode even worse. I happen to know someone who knows Al Jardine quite well, and he's told me that Mike Love is a rapacious guy. And I remember hearing about twenty years ago that Mike Love was an extremely prolific womanizer. it all fits.....I hope Brian Wilson takes some consolation in the knowledge that two hundred years from now, after most of today's "music" has long since disappeared, people will still be marveling over the beauty of his songs.
There's a current piece at slate.com which reassures Slate's nice liberal readers that Mr. Love isn't too white, at least culturally:
... In just the past few weeks, Love has gone in for a lot of suspicious overpraise from the basketball establishment ...
... he has found himself caught up in basketball's deathless culture war, in which the game is always facing down some phony existential crisis and which is related, as often as not, to the fell plague of playground basketball. This became an inevitability the moment Love committed to UCLA, John Wooden's UCLA, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Fundamentals....
http://www.slate.com/id/2188158/
"testing99 said...
Interesting that many Mexicans believe, in aggregate, that Open Borders despite McCain's preferences for them are more likely with either Dem.
It's sort of a smackdown of the thinking on VDARE and many of your readers."
No it isn't, Evil Neocon. Did it ever occur to you that we might understand american politics better than mexicans do? Mexicans' more tribal understanding of politics leads them to believe that McCain would side with his white bretheren. We - who know John McCain much better - do not.
testing99 said...
Somewhat OT, have you seen that Mexicans prefer Hillary or Obama to McCain, because they think they'll be more amenable to Open Borders and Amnesty?
Yes, I read it on VDARE, in an article by Allan Wall: http://www.vdare.com/awall/080403_memo.htm
Interesting that many Mexicans believe, in aggregate, that Open Borders despite McCain's preferences for them are more likely with either Dem.
Precisely as Marcus Epstein wrote on VDARE in January:
http://www.vdare.com/epstein/080131_republicans.htm
Steve has gone beyond that and pointed out that to domestic Hispanic voters, immigration policy
is not much of a draw:
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/070819_rove.htm
In short, the thinking on VDARE has not only reported, but clearly predicted this story, and put it in context.
It's sort of a smackdown of the thinking on VDARE
Your claim has met a clean test of evidence, and failed completely.
Ben, re T99s comment about a smackdown. I find his comment very imprecise.
Maybe he means, yay for Steve & Vdare - they were right!
But...
If he means that its a refutation of what Steve & Vdare have been about then of course he is utterly wrong or deluded.
Its exactly what I would expect based on reading Steve & Vdare, that no matter how craven an appeaser McCain is he cannot out-appease Dems.
I guess the common denominator would be dexterity and confidence...at least for the successful ones.
Is it "more white" or whiter? I've been wondering.
No, the idea I've heard expressed here and on VDARE is that Hillary is the better bet over McCain for denying Immigration "reform" aka Open Borders. I've flirted with that idea myself (that Hillary being more unpopular would be "constrained" in a way that McCain won't).
Obviously, Mexicans see McCain as more constrained. Rather than less. Their preference tree being: Hillary>Obama>McCain. They would see collectively to know something about the candidates "constrainability" since McCain, Obama, and Hillary all seem to have the same desire to throw open the borders completely. Personally I don't see any difference in what each "wants to do" just how certainly Mexicans see how they are "able to do it."
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WRT Kevin Love, I find it interesting that Pro Basketball is getting "whiter." I.E. it's not just Steve Nash or the German guy or what have you. It's the Laker's Pau Gasol.
What we may be seeing is an erosion of Black dominance in Basketball as solid, consistent performance under pressure with team play beats pure athleticism. Since Basketball requires both a grind-it-out attitude during the season to obtain high seedings and home-court advantage, and is a best of five or seven series in the playoffs, the only shocker is that it took this long.
The descriptions of Kevin Love seem to show a style of play that is consistent, team-oriented (defense and rebounds mostly), not particularly geared towards getting applause or highlight reels, and very different from "showmanship" that Mike Love or other rock musicians had.
Ten years ago "European" players were like Vlade Divac, mostly known for fake dives onto the hardwood to draw fouls. Now they are Dirk Nowiecki (sp?) and Gasol. Guys at the heart of the lineup, expected to produce (mostly defensively).
Parenthetically, Phil Jackson had been trying without success for years to get Kwame Brown to play D. Saying he could be another Barkley and have quite a career. But Brown never wanted to play D.
Last add -- yes Steve is quite correct about the futility about trying to out-pander Dems on Immigration "reform" aka open the borders.
After watching kevin Love, he played just like your typical white player. He was slow, could not defend anyone in a one on one situaiton, was constantly being outjumped for rebounds, could not get up and down the count; and when put in a pressure situation, he shot up bricks.
One of the marks of most white players is that they fold under pressure and Love definitely demonstrated that.
Character does run in families, and any expert in sociopathy will tell you that it is passed along by the mother more than the father...
Too interesting not to read up on. Gimme cites.
"The descriptions of Kevin Love seem to show a style of play that is consistent, team-oriented (defense and rebounds mostly), not particularly geared towards getting applause or highlight reels,"
Poor Kevin Love. He looked like the stereotypical fat slow white kid yesterday.
As a couple of people here pointed out, Kevin Love is not going to be an NBA star, although he might stick with some team for a few years.
If anyone looked like a future white NBA star, it was that big freshman center for Kansas, who dominated UNC whenever he was in.
And the Euro success in the NBA is not because they play a "white" game, but because they're not hung up on race stereotypes or intimidated by blacks, but just take the best they see from everywhere and work with that. Including from black Americans, who have had a big influence on the Euro game. Europe and South America love basketball and have a big genetic base to draw on, with time they were naturally going to start to excel.
It's also silly to tag black NBA players as just "pure athleticism". The best black players have always been far more than that. Look how Jordan reinvented himself as his initial athletic edge faded. Look at the run of brilliant black American point guards -- the heady "quarterback" position on the court -- from Magic Johnson to Chris Paul and Deron Williams today. Look at how well the Celtics are playing together now, Garnett/Pierce/Allen clearly recognize their proper roles and work together within those. The NBA in general has been experiencing a renaissance of team play for some years now.
No, the idea I've heard expressed here and on VDARE is that Hillary is the better bet over McCain for denying Immigration "reform" aka Open Borders.
She is. The only silver lining is the possibility of punishing the GOP.
Ray Midge --
I can't remember exactly where I've read that, although I have read it at least a couple times, and I've read over half of the books on sociopathy out there. The best book I've read on the subject is probably "The Antisocial Personalities" by Professor Lykken of the University of Minnesota. Another good book was "Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream" (I'm drawing a blank on the author's name). Hervey Cleckley wrote "The Mask of Sanity" back in the 1940's, and that work is supposed to be a seminal work in the field (I haven't read it). Dr. Robert Hare is generally considered the leading expert on sociopathy today, and his first book, though based strictly on jailhouse interviews, isn't bad.
The idea behind the theory that sociopathy is more easily passed on maternally than paternally is basically that the mother is the parent who has more contact with the child in his first year of life, breast-feeding him and so on, and if that mother just goes through the motions, or just neglects him, and the child doesn't really form an attachment with her, the child will never really be able to bond with anyone else for the rest of his life. This is why so many sociopaths seem to emerge from orphanages, and why so many American parents who adopt children from Romanian orphanages etc. have problems with them later on, no matter how much love these adopted children get from them from age two or so on. One of the interesting things about sociopathy is that while most of the other mental abnormalities have been increasingly shown to be genetic/ neurobiological in origin, sociopathy still seems to have a very strong environmental component (which is not to say there's not also a genetic and hormonal component).
And btw, I'm not saying that Mike Love is a sociopath, I don't know enough to say that, merely that he has a number of red flags waving around him.
There are several professional athletes who have also gone into rock music. One that immediately comes to mind is former White Sox and Yankees pitcher Jack McDowell.
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